


Blood in the Water

by straightforwardly



Category: Chalice - Robin McKinley
Genre: Gen, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 07:34:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8969161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straightforwardly/pseuds/straightforwardly
Summary: A moment of calm before the battle begins. The Chalice mixes her cup.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Apricot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apricot/gifts).



The Chalice’s weariness sunk into her bones, as familiar as an old friend. But she was always weary. It could not become an excuse to neglect her burdens.

Little now remained to be done before the coming dawn. The earthlines had been walked and fed and bound once more, a task which grew simpler with every repetition. Their demesne was small, smaller than many, but it had drunk deeply of blood over the years and had grown all the firmer for it. 

All that was left to be done now was the mixing of the cup for the Circle. 

She pulled a heavy, beaten iron cup down from her shelves. As she did so she recalled, as she always did, how the Chalice before her had once told her of the difficulties of mixing with a battlefield cup, and how rare it was that their demesne had one at all. Uncertainty was the greatest enemy of a Chalice, and there was little that was less certain than a battle; many a Chalice had had a battlefield cup explode in their hands.

Now, with well over a decade of Chalicehood behind her, there were few cups she used more. She had found that she had a talent for it, for predicting just what would be needed even when they had only the faintest scraps of knowledge of what their enemy had planned for them.

Had she the luxury to worry, perhaps the innate understanding she had of such things would concern her. Had she the luxury, many things would.

She began to pull her ingredients down. These herbs, for wakefulness and wisdom. These stones, for strength, for loyalty, for courage. A bit of good, cold water, drawn fresh from the House’s wells, for binding.

And blood. From a boar this time, for fierceness and determination. 

In her beginning days as Chalice, she’d diluted her mixtures more, overwhelmed by the realities of what she held her Chalice in, and unwilling to ask so much from a Circle who would have never flinched from water or wine but hesitated when they saw blood. But lessening the amount of blood she’d used had done just that: weakened the strength of her cups, in a time when their demesne could ill-afford it. Now they had all grown used to that sickly copper taste coating their throats. 

The stones in first, and then the herbs. As she worked, she found herself thinking back to those early days, when even the thought of fighting a war had seemed such an overwhelming thing. 

Their enemy had been Oakroot then, and they had announced their intention of war by assassinating the Chalice. They’d thought to demoralize them. In many ways, the Chalice _was_ the demesne: for her to die in such a way, was to say that they would do the same to the demesne itself.

She’d been in the same room when the Chalice before her had died. She’d been the only one. When the rest of the Circle had found her, she’d been soaked in the former Chalice’s blood— blood that had kept flowing from her former master’s corpse no matter how she tried to staunch it, more blood than any human blood could rightfully hold. And still it had continued to flow, filling the room like water as she had wept in desperate grief. 

No one had wanted to believe what it meant. For a Chalice to hold her Chalice in blood— such a thing had never been. What that meant for the future of their demesne, no one wanted to consider. 

It had been no easier for her. 

During the days of her training, she’d always known that she would never hold her Chalice in water. Wine had always felt better to use, though even that had never felt quite right. She had always thought it because she was no proper Chalice yet, only an apprentice— and perhaps that would have been true, had her master the Chalice before her not died as she did. 

She could never know. Regardless of what could have been, the vessel of her Chalicehood had been chosen as blood, and would be so for as long as she lived. For the Chalice she had once been, that had been difficult to understand, or accept.

Now, she had grown used to the blood, as had her Circle. Oakroot was long gone and half-forgotten, but still new enemies kept on coming, some from greed or lust for power, and still more out of fear of her Chalice. Wars ended and begun anew; their enemies fought them and died, and their people fought and died in turn, albeit in lesser numbers. 

So much blood had been spilled. 

It had only made Springleafturn grow stronger.

She added the water to the cup, and then the boar’s blood. She gave the cup a considering look, then reached for the little knife she always kept with her. She pulled back her sleeves, exposing her scarred wrist, and made a small cut, letting a few droplets of blood dribble into the contents of the cup. 

It was a capital offense to harm a Chalice. But what if the one harming her was her very own self?

Such questions were yet another thing she did not have the luxury to think long about. All she knew that when her demesne was in need, her own blood bound and strengthened better than that of any animal she could find. 

After all: in many ways, the Chalice _was_ the demesne.

Satisfied, she picked up the cup, and left for the Hall. She encountered few on the way, and those that she did see were quick to move from her way. 

The Clearseer waited for her at the doors to the Hall, as he often did. It had been long since there were breaks in their Circle, but in the days when there were, he had been a stout ally. He had been the first to accept that blood was the vessel of her Chalicehood, and had long grown used to the necessity of using it in his scrying. 

He was, perhaps, the closest thing she had to a friend.

“Chalice,” he said in grim greeting. He did not use her name; he never did. 

She was always the Chalice now. She could afford no different. When she’d last been anything other, the last Chalice had still drawn breath. 

They entered the Hall together. They were the last; all of the others had already gathered. A line of faces turned to them, and the Clearseer took his place among their number. 

The Chalice carried her cup. First to the Master, old before his time, who drank deep. Then to the rest of the Circle, whose lined faces she knew well, and last of all to the general and other officers, who she knew perhaps just as well. 

She offered, and all drank, as they had countless times before. Year upon year, battle upon battle, the same pantomime played out, over and over again. 

And even as she took her place, standing besides the Master, she knew: this would not be the last time she mixed such a cup. 

And she wondered if such a time would ever come.


End file.
